About: Kpop Udates “The Journey to Kpop”

I’m a 21 year old student from New York City and I’ve been part of the Hallyu Wave since 2011. I came over from Jpop because I wanted some diversity in terms of idols groups. I didn’t see much from the groups in Jpop that were called “idols” outside of the “Kawaii” concept. I know there are plenty of Japanese artists with the concept I was looking for, but I wanted it from “idol groups”. If you’re confused, then I’ll try to explain it better later on. Even seemingly dark MVs were cute in some way. I was looking for something fierce and I started with Kdramas. My first one was “Dream High”, which I call an “idol-heavy” drama because of all the idols in the show. It’s natural that viewers of the drama will soon learn about Kpop, if they didn’t know about it already. I did not and I kept hearing about “missA’s Suzy”. I thought missA was an actual person and that she managed Suzy, but I later found out missA was the name of the group Bae Suzy was in. That’s how you know I had no experience with Kpop when watching it. I was shown Kpop by a S0NE friend of mine and the first song/MV I encountered was “The Boys” by SNSD. I thought this was the “color” of SNSD, which seemed strong and somewhat fierce. That was what I was looking for, so I saw their related video called “Gee”. I quickly found out SNSD did not have the “color” I was looking for and I couldn’t even get through the entire song. It was too cute and bubbly for me. It also made me chuckle after they got to the chorus of “Gee gee gee gee gee”. I haven’t heard the entire song to this day, but I’ve heard most of it from variety shows referencing it or SNSD performing some of it. I soon saw 2NE1‘s “I Am The Best” and I found my group. They had exactly what I was looking for and I immediately immersed myself in the Blackjack fandom. I am not a person who believes other groups and their fans should be bashed or that I cannot listen to other groups out of loyalty to my biases. I still listen to Jpop too, so I never get involved in fan wars. I also can criticize artists I like, if they do something wrong or if the criticism is constructive. I will often try to leave my biases out of my blog entries and I will never rush in to bash someone who berates my biases. I don’t like to argue and cause conflicts, so I’ll simply defend my point on why I like them and move on. I believe the message of the Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA), which is “music makes us one”. We should unite through music and not cause division. I decided to start blogging about Kpop because I wanted to express my thoughts in a diary-like format. I was also interested about what other people thought, but writing paragraphs of text in a Facebook page post from Soompi.com is not the best way to do it. People so far have voted in polls (to various degrees), but I have yet to see any comments (except some spam the site apparently blocked). I look forward to the kinds of discussion I see on blog sites like EatYourKimchi (EYK) or Seoulistic.com, which are both popular blogs/vlogs/websites. I’m not saying I’m anywhere near as popular as they are, but the interaction is nice to see. Maybe I could even interact with them one day. A blogger can dream at least. I’ll make a Twitter and Facebook page for the blog, if I see a large enough following developing for it. I look forward to sharing my views with everyone. ^_^

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I thought I’d be nice and give everyone a chance to see the two blogs/vlogs/websites I mentioned above. Enjoy! ^_^